# 1.6 (Soft)-Feature Freeze: Nov 8th
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379
**Category:** Internals & Design
**Created:** [October 31, 2020, 6:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379 "2020-10-31T18:32:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2020, 6:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/1 "2020-10-31T18:32:16Z")
Julia 1.6 is shaping up to be a beast of a release, however, we are already significantly overdue with starting the release preparations. Therefore, we are announcing a (soft) feature freeze already at November 8th. The term “soft” here means that if something that has been worked on for a long time is not 100% ready by the deadline, it can probably still go in. But don’t start working on new features for inclusion into 1.6.
Also, in order to get people testing things on a 1.6 alpha as soon as possible, as well as allowing disruptive changes to be merged into master, we will likely branch quite soon, perhaps even sooner than the soft feature freeze. Features merged after the branching, which are supposed to go into 1.6, will just be backported to that branch.
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2020, 7:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/2 "2020-11-02T19:00:25Z")
10 posts were split to a new topic: [(Re)-installation of packages when changing Julia versions?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/re-installation-of-packages-when-changing-julia-versions/49473)
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### Author:  [@mgkuhn](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mgkuhn)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2020, 10:44am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/3 "2020-11-06T10:44:07Z")
**Suggestion:** For the benefit of those of us who catch up on Discourse only once a week, would it be possible to send future feature-freeze announcements also to the [Announcement category](https://discourse.julialang.org/c/announce/25), such that we just have to set the notification level there to at least “Watching First Post” to get a timely warning email? (I regularly see feature-freeze-in-one-week announcements about a week late.)
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2020, 10:26am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/4 "2020-12-09T10:26:18Z")
There is now a new `release-1.6` branch. PRs that are aimed to go into 1.6 need a backport label.
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### Author:  [@cortner](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cortner)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2020, 7:20pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/5 "2020-12-10T19:20:41Z")
At some point I read that 1.6 might be an LTS release. Is that still a possibility?
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### Author:  [@Oscar\_Smith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Oscar_Smith)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2020, 7:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/6 "2020-12-10T19:25:08Z")
Yes. 1.6 is currently expected to become the LTS once 1.7 is out. (we don’t declare LTS right away since anyone that wants an LTS definitely wants at least 1 patch release)
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2020, 7:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/7 "2020-12-10T19:25:44Z")
> [@Oscar\_Smith](#):
>
> Yes. 1.6 is currently expected to become the LTS once 1.7 is out.
I don’t think that is decided yet.
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### Author:  [@Oscar\_Smith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Oscar_Smith)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/8 "2020-12-10T19:30:43Z")
Yeah. I said expected not because it’s definite, but because it was announced at JuliaCon, and the reasons it was originally announced remain true.
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### Author:  [@Elrod](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Elrod)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2020, 12:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/1-6-soft-feature-freeze-nov-8th/49379/9 "2020-12-11T00:55:57Z")
Personally, I’d prefer 1.7 to be the new LTS because the new AD additions aren’t in 1.6.